Stephane Dion and his Green Shift are vindicated. More Hard Work needed though.

“The government proposes that the price on carbon pollution should start at a minimum of $10 per tonne in 2018, rising by $10 each year to $50 per tonne in 2022.”

And then the kicker.

“If neither a price nor cap-and-trade system is in place by 2018, the Government of Canada would implement a price in that jurisdiction.”

When the prime minister concluded his remarks, Stéphane Dion left his seat and walked over to shake Trudeau’s hand.

This was extremely gratifying to read as someone who attended the 2008 Liberal Convention, witnessed Stephane Dion’s victory, and became a Liberal member because of it (based a lot on his green policies and his Green Shift) and then watched Dion and his Green Shift plan mocked relentlessly, which led to his defeat.

We now have a version of that plan about to take place, and I for one applaud the Liberal government’s move in finally moving on this file. The provinces have time to come up with plans, and if they don’t, or if they are still stonewalling (as is the case with Premier Brad Wall and Saskatchewan), the federal government will do it for them. It’s not dis-similar to Obamacare, where the states were given opportunities to set up their own health care setup to comply, and if they refused or couldn’t, the US government would set up the health exchanges for them.

More needs to be done however. Elizabeth May is correct when she says that for Canada to meet our Paris Agreement goals, we must have carbon basically taxed at 200$ a ton by 2030; so 50$ a ton at 2022 is a long ways away from that. There needs to be additional pricing or other measures taken to reach that goal.